


Thunder Storms

by Tieleen



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Character of Color, Early Work, Gen, Gen Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-03
Updated: 2011-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-14 09:46:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/147949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tieleen/pseuds/Tieleen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What of the things we leave behind?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thunder Storms

Ardity.

In some strange language I never knew, it means "earth", or "land". My mother chose this name for me. When she could no longer stop the thunder storms from coming, when the sky and freedom called and their voice was sweeter than ever, she hoped I would be her anchor. It wasn't her powers that were slowly failing, it was her will to stop them from controlling her; and she had hoped, by this act, to remind herself of how earth and land were Mother Nature and life and home. How it wasn't always a cage.

That's just how I imagine it, seventeen years later, from everything my family has ever told me about her. Maybe they're wrong, and I am, too. Maybe earth was always a cage, and all that faded away was her ability to hide it. How else do you explain the way I sometimes need so much to run away, to be in empty space, to be out, _away_ , anywhere, nowhere? Just be free. It's her blood that flows in my veins, after all.

But I'm not my mother. I can't fly.

I was, by everything I was told and everything I remember and everything I feel I know I was to be her anchor to this land. Her little Ardity, her little piece of earth to carry around. But it didn't work, did it, mom? I failed before I was even old enough to know what was happening.

I remember it. Five years old and knowing nothing, I remember watching in terror, I remember my father clinging to her leg and trying to pull her down, a madman in rain and wind and lightning and thunder, screaming at her not to disappear, not to leave, not to give up. Please stay, I need you, we love you; please stay, don't lose yourself up there. Please stay, please don't let go, Stormy.

It didn't work, did it?

Me and my papa, we both failed to keep her down, keep her from laughing and laughing in utter exhilaration - not the laugh of some loony, but the jingling bells I remember from the happiest fragments of my childhood. And it was with this laugh that she gave up and let the wind carry her up there, leaving us down here, leaving us with nothing. We both failed, me and my father. Neither of us can fly.

When it gets bad, I sometimes go up to the roof of the mansion. It rarely clears away the feeling of ground-made bars blocking my way, blocking my view, but it helps. When I go into town I climb the highest buildings, I lean over the railing until someone tells me it's too dangerous. And I can't help but think, is it really so terrible, a freefall?

My mother chose to lose herself in the elements. My mother could fly. My mother escaped.

I sometimes want out as well.

But I can't fly, and I'll be giving away my life where she gave, what? Love? Her child? Her sanity?

For freedom.

It took her years, Ororo Munroe of the X-Men, to give up her humanity and become the storm. Never heard from again, I imagine her up there every time it's raining. Not my guiding angel, but the freedom I'll never have.

I hate to cry. Little drops of salty water coming down - it's just too ironic, you know?

This is the roof of my home, where I am a little closer to the sky, a little farther from the ground. A little farther from my father, my aunts and uncles and cousins, my friends and loved ones. I'm one step out of the cage and I'll never take another step.

I'll never go this one more step over the edge of the roof, where the railing my father insisted they build there so many years ago is broken. I won't keep my eyes trained on the blue or darkness of freedom as I step forward, coming so close to the empty space of no confines for one glorious moment. I won't search for my mother's eyes up there, looking at me with that laugh of jingling bells and the smile of nothing but happiness, and utter sadness in her eyes that I lost the same battle.

Suddenly so tired, I go back to the high window I sneaked up here through. I can't fly. I'm a piece of ground more mobile than most. Ardity and land and earth, freedom isn't within my reach.

As they say, it will all look better once the rain stops.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this story many years ago, before we had Google, after one of my high school teachers told my class the meaning of the word 'ardity'. Now that we have Google, I know she was either very wrong, or the language she was thinking about is beyond mortal search engines. (It's still possible it was Aramaic, especially since 'ard' in Arabic does mean land, but Google knows Aramaic. Google knows all things.)
> 
> I suppose I could change it now, except, well - no, I couldn't. So instead, we'll say this takes place in an alternate universe not too far off, where comics is better and my high school teacher was right.


End file.
